San Diego Blue Shield; The Bad Guy, the Hero, or Normal Like the Rest of Us?
Despite all the horror-story blog posts about disagreeable entanglements with San Diego Blue Shield flowing through cyberspace right now, the insurance provider recently announced several grants they are awarding to various health care projects around the state to show that they do in fact have a heart, and they’re willing to prove it by donating the asset that people are most aggressively accusing them of hoarding; money.
San Diego Blue Shield pledged a total of $13.1 million dollars in grants is to be distributed to several nonprofit organizations and programs to improve the quality of patient care, mainly by funding technology to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs).
In California, it is estimated that 150,000 patients suffer from HAIs every year, 9,000 of which result in death. Participating hospitals will receive support for new technology and collaborative learning opportunities about best practices. While only not-for-profit hospitals can receive funding from the grants awarded by San Diego Blue Shield, this grant is unique because for-profit hospitals are invited to participate in the collaborative learning sessions and will have the opportunity to purchase the technology at a reduced price
As an added measure of public good will, the financial benefit of the consequences of these grants to the community at large was addressed. Crystal Hayling, president and CEO of BSCF has been quoted as saying “we expect . . . this effort to mean 4,000 fewer patients will contract an HAI in the next year, which translates into 30,000 fewer patient days in the hospital, $60 million in avoided costs to patients and hospitals, and nearly $15 million in bottom-line hospital savings.”
So San Diego Blue Shield may not be the horrible bad-guy everyone seems too want them to be after all, but really a normal, imperfect corporation with customer grievances, but one that tries to do the right thing for their members, their business partners and yes, their shareholders too.